In mobile communication networks it is known to direct network traffic related to a specific service to a bearer with a certain quality of service (QoS). In this respect, a bearer is considered to be an information transmission context or path of defined characteristics, e.g.
capacity, delay and/or bit error rate. Typically, a number of bearers will be established between a gateway of a mobile communication network and a user equipment, e.g. a mobile phone or other type of mobile terminal. A bearer may carry downlink (DL) data traffic in a direction from the network to the user equipment, and may carry data traffic in an uplink (UL) direction from the user equipment to the network. In the gateway and in the user equipment the data traffic, which includes a plurality of IP data packets (IP: “Internet Protocol”) can be filtered using IP 5-tuple packet filters, thereby directing the IP data packets to a desired bearer.
For performance monitoring, a packet flow associated with a certain terminal or service needs to be filtered out from the network traffic of the communication network. This typically requires significant processing resources. For example, it may be necessary to process multiple protocol header fields, e.g. source or destination IP address, source or destination port numbers, or the like, of all data packets crossing a transport network interface. With increasing transport network bitrates, the required processing resources increase as well.
Accordingly, there is a need for reliable and efficient techniques for performance monitoring in a communication network.